On February 13th, 2018, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria visited Kogi State to take part in the Kogi Economic and Investment programme initiated and sponsored by the Kogi State government. The celebration that greeted the occasion on the social media informs the discerning mind the motive behind the visit of the VP. Facebook was filled to the brim, celebrating Osinbajo’s visit.
The truth must be told. There was nothing spectacular about the visit, and so the celebration is needless. Aside the fact that the visit did not benefit an average Kogite, deploying Osinbajo to take part in an investment talk of the state is more political than economical. Osinbajo is a politician and a lawyer, and should the government decide to educate the people on investment, seasoned investors like Dangote, Otedola, Jim Ovia, Bisi Adesanya, Tony Elumelu, etc. should have been chosen to give the talk.
The government does not need to invite the VP for an investment talk of a state. Presidents and Vice Presidents were in the past invited to states to commission projects or to lay the foundation stones of people-oriented projects. If the government wants to diversify the economy of the state, investing in the people and watching them grow is the best investment ever.
Here is a state that reeks in poverty, pain and anguish introduced and managed by the tyro government; this is a state where workers are owed more than 15 months’ salaries; this is a state that prizes mediocrity over social welfare.
How will the investment work with people that are perpetually impoverished and deprived?
The government has lost its political force, virility and potency, and the only way it can rejig its deflating popularity and make the people feel it is still relevant and functional is to draft the federal force down to the state. We are well aware that Buhari and all of his supporters will be on this government’s side because this is the only government that worships Buhari like an idol. This is the only government that embraces a programme that even the federal government treads with caution to introduce – the Cattle Colony. Only a naïve man will praise the governor for bringing the VP down.
There was no significant effect in the visit, honestly. This is because neither Osinbajo nor Buhari represents a popular, credulous and stainless government, and though, Osinbajo as well as the Minister of Finance heads the federal economic team, yet the battered nature of the country’s economy should inform a lettered man that Osinbajo and his government represents failure, poverty and dehumanisation. Only birds of a feather flock together.
Osinbajo’s invitation to a Kogi summit is therefore a defeatist intention. It holds no significant economic value for any Kogite. A government that cannot carry out the simplest of political and administrative responsibility – salary payment – cannot invest in anybody’s future. A state that promotes investment holds 90% of the people’s wealth in form of pensions, salaries, allowances and gratuities. The government should not be involved in the ostentatious display of creativity and sensibility. People can only invest when they have the money to. The government should pay them their salaries and watch them make good use of this money.
Why the loud and hollow supporters of this government should bury their insensate sycophancy in shame is, on the 2nd of this month, Osinbajo attended the wedding of his mere Personal Assistant, Hafiz Kawu in Kano with no outrageous funfair.
If presidential visit is to them novel and a high sense of achievement, I want to take them down the memory lane that in 1993, Vice President Augustus Aikhomu visited Alloma community. He was invited by the then Governor, Alhaji Prince Abubakar Audu to commission Alloma Rural Electrification Project. In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo was in Anyigba to lay the foundation stone of the Kogi State University. Obasanjo later came back to commission the Kogi State University, Anyigba.
These presidential visits are commendable and worthy of celebration because the governor and the people had something spectacular to benefit from the government and the projects.
– Odih Daniel N.
